There were a couple of high profile developments in the audience measurement industry this week that will likely have profound implications for how audiences are measured and valued in the years to come. First came Nielsen and Twitter’s announcement that the two companies would be collaborating on a new metric — a “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” for television programs. Then came the announcement from Nielsen and Arbitron that Nielsen would be acquiring the radio audience measurement firm in a cash and stock deal.

We’re in the midst of Advertising Week here in New York, which provides an interesting lens into how the audience marketplace is reacting to the ongoing changes in how consumers use media, and in how this usage can be measured.

This week, New Delhi Television Limited, India’s oldest and largest news network, filed a multi-billion dollar lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court, alleging that the Nielsen Company and its partner in India, Kantar Media Research, have been receiving bribes in exchange for rampant manipulation of television viewership data. The lawsuit also contends that similar activities are taking place in places such as Turkey, the Phillipines, and here in the U.S. (specifically, Florida). The full 196-page complaint can be found here.

It’s an often-forgotten fact of television audience measurement that Nielsen still measures 15o of the 210 U.S. television markets using nothing more sophisticated than old-fashioned paper diaries. According to an announcement from Nielsen yesterday, that might finally be starting to change.

The Audience Evolution blog has unfortuantely been on the back burner the past couple of months as I’ve been drowning in a number of other obligations. But I am finally reaching the light at the end of the tunnel and so will be returning to this on a regular basis in the weeks to come.

A common topic of this blog (as well as a point of focus of the Audience Evolution book) has been the concept of engagement, and how various stakeholders (measurement firms, advertisers, content providers, etc.) are working to create concrete defintions that can function as meaningful performance metrics (and perhaps, one day, currencies) in the audience marketplace.